TOM LARK RELEASES DEBUT ALBUM BRAVE STAR

Tom Lark a.k.a Shannon Fowler has released his debut album Brave Star, which features the album focus track and third single ‘Brave Star’.

Brave Star is the first new musical material from Tom Lark after a seven-year hiatus, and the debut full-length album from the Ōtautahi-born, Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist.

‘Brave Star’ follows the second single ‘Live Wires’ and lead single ‘Radio Blaster’ and, put succinctly, is a song about showbiz.

“My first job was working on a TV show pitched as Letterman for kids,” recalls the artist, “and I was the Paul Shaffer of kids’ TV in New Zealand. My job was to play the guitar. I met lots of NZ’s absolute hawttest celebs from the early-00s, but over the years you see how things move on for them. Much like some small-town rodeo, people hang on until they lose their balance or get bucked off. ‘Brave Star’ is like a get well soon card: ‘Maybe you’re a star but not the one you thought you were.’

Brave Star follows two eponymous Tom Lark EPs, which were released in 2011 and 2015 respectively. Those early tunes found a home locally on the Student Radio Network, and abroad on Australian radio station Triple J – where ‘Something To Tell You’ reached #1 Most Played.

Following this success Fowler chose to set aside the Tom Lark moniker for a period, dipping his toes in the warm waters of pop music and releasing a series of bangers under the Shannon Matthew Vanya pseudonym – as well as producing for a number of other artists, including Merk, Randa and A.C. Freazy.

With Tom Lark’s Brave Star Fowler returns to his first love, which turns out to be making sunburnt psychedelic folk fit for sensitive cowboys to meander and muse to.

Brave Star is out through Winegum Records and available now via Bandcamp.

Tracklist